Armenian genocide

Of all the causes in the universe that aim at redress and compensation, that of the Armenian genocide seems to be the most hopeless. Only that of the American native peoples would appear more hopeless, only because their surviving members are so small a minority in their original homeland. I don't really know how many Armenians are still living in Turkey, but their continued suppression, and the absolute denial by the Turkish government that the genocide ever happened, is more than enough reason for the European peoples to exclude Turkey from integration into Europe. The negative connotation of the word 'Turk' will never be erased as long as these conditions remain.

Though I have little hope that this particular genocide will ever be redressed, this webpage dedicated to it at least gives us a very tangible picture of what those losses were, and who was responsible. The surprise for many people will be not that the Turks and the Kurds (both Muslim nations) actively committed the genocide, but that the 'Christian' West passively abetted it, and for their own economic interests. For Americans, it may be a shock that we are included in that list.

This passive collaboration with and participation in genocidal crime is just an extreme, and still active, example of what the Western world has been doing to the peoples of the 'third world' since the Age of Discovery in the fifteenth century. The West has become wealthy and advanced far beyond the rest of the world precisely through our exploitation of other nations. This is a macro-pattern of the same failure of human nature that continues in every country on earth, whereby the advantaged exploit the disadvantaged in order to amass wealth and power.

Revolution is a small price to pay for redress in cases of social and economic injustice, but ultimately it always succumbs to the same flawed human nature against which it struggles. All the while, the Message of Christ, which includes the remedy for every social ill, is ignored or criticized as being unworkable, and each generation of the human race tries to reinvent the wheel. The proof that authentic Christianity, the Message not the religion, is true, is that it is consistently rejected by almost everyone. Humanity's built-in law of failure can only be over-ridden by mercy (grace) that only very few are willing to accept.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Matthew 7:13-14